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Attractively bound hard-backed books containing lots of information seem to be big sellers among the piles laid out for Christmas. E: Foley and B. Coates ‘Homework for Grown-ups – everything you learnt at school … and promptly forgot’ is yet another in the series.

I received my copy as a gift and dipped into it rather casually at first. I was soon thoroughly enjoying some of the masses of information the book provides. It is embarrassing to get halfway through each chapter and confront ones own ignorance. In mathematics, for example, I got as far as a decagon but what is an icosagon?

Homework for Grown-ups

This is a treasure of a compendium of facts we like to think we know. It deals with English, Mathematics, Home Economics, History, Science, Religious Education, Geography, Classics, Physical Education and Art – a fine rounded education. (‘Whose history?’ I hear you ask. There’s an eclectic dabble including Marathon, Yarmuk, Agincourt and the Somme.)

Homework for Grown-ups is certainly a useful book to have around if you need to know where your pancreas is or the name of a Greek letter. There are even test papers at the end of each chapter. My only criticism is that the authors didn’t provide an index of all that useful information.

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